Like some kind of dark ritual
My favorite piece by my favorite artist.
It's a couple days before Christmas, and I'm at my maternal grandparents' house. The year is 2006, and I am eight years old. My oldest uncle (gay, nerdy, kind) is home for the holidays, so I follow him around the basement as he sifts through his childhood belongings. He's looking for a binder. Closets, drawers, upstairs and downstairs, until eventually a wooden chest spits out a shallow, rectangular box sealed neatly with packing tape. "Tempest" is scribbled on the white cardboard in Sharpie. Inside: a nondescript black half-inch binder containing a single copy of every card released in Magic: The Gathering's twelfth expansion.
A truly killer advertisement for Tempest's October 1997 release.
"There's a bunch of these cards that I don't want," he says, squinting as he examines each page. "Not the ones in here, obviously. But in the other boxes." Hours later, I'd load up the trunk of my mom's car with three BCW long boxes of cards ranging from Legends through Odyssey.
My uncle left town without teaching me how to play. I spent hours poring over the art, turning the flavor text over in my mind, teasing at the implications. Guessing blindly at what the mechanics did (and how prevalent they were; banding, anyone?) and how one might assemble a deck. There was a single "pocket rulebook" from the Ice Age set, but it felt impossible to parse. Regardless, my imagination found a wholly new dimension within the confines of these cardboard rectangles.
A handful of favorites from my collection.
My family didn't have card game money in the budget, though, and so Magic fell by the wayside. I'd pull the cards out a few times a year, usually during thunderstorms; all I needed was a pile of cards and a battery-powered lamp to keep me entertained. I remember begging my mom to help me figure out how to play. I should try to teach her sometime.
It wasn't until the Zendikar block some five years later that my uncle had moved back to town and offered to take me to the pre-release launch of Rise of the Eldrazi. I lost hard, obviously, but I will never forget pulling the ultimate chase card in my first pack:
Isn't she beautiful? And terrifying?
Then... middle school happened. Ironically, the folks I met who did play Magic thought I was a total loser for having old cards. I packed up my collection and set it all aside for almost thirteen years.
In many respects, the time I spend with my hobbies at the table has always been vastly outpaced and outweighed by the emotional connection I feel for the artistry of it all. I've played far less Magic than most, but the way those cards made me feel as a child is something I've carried with me forever. I am moved to tears by the beauty of my John Avon Mountains. My heart sings when I behold my World Championship 1997 reprints of Force of Will. In spite of everything, Magic: The Gathering will always be my favorite game.
If you'd like, please feel free to take a peek at my oldest, most cherished cards — the ones my uncle gave me.
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